The Country Maiden: Fields and Leisure

Ming Zhu remembered she had fainted from the heat while queuing to buy makeup for her cousin in China.

She should have woken up in a hospital, right?

Why was she seeing this scene?!

Before her eyes was a mud-brick house with a thatched roof interlaced with bamboo strips, the earthen walls blotchy, marked with streaks where rain had leaked through.

She was lying on a clay bed now, a whitewashed sheet covering a thin, blackish-grey layer of old batting, with patches of dried straw peeking through below.

The room's window was very small and very high, with a sliver of light seeping through.

It shone upon a set of old red lacquered wooden cabinets, one leg of the cabinet missing and replaced by a block of wood, leaning askew against the wall.

...

Ming Zhu was somewhat dazed.

She had come from a good family, with both parents as municipal leaders, and being a top student herself, she had always ranked within the top three in school. After a year of university, she had successfully gone abroad to study, her hands soft with awards and scholarships...

Except on television, she had never seen an environment so impoverished.

Her first reaction was to wonder whether, after fainting, she had been kidnapped by human traffickers to some rumored mountain area to become a wife to some old bachelor?

But then she thought, she was abroad, with many eyes upon her, traffickers shouldn't be so brazen. Besides, her roommate had been queuing with her.

Another look, at her hands and feet, her body...

What the hell, this dark and chubby girl—what ghost was this?

These hands—so plump like buns!

Buckwheat-flour buns at that!

These arms—so thick, they were almost the same diameter as her previous legs, right?

She touched her chin, felt two layers of double chin, supple enough to be flicked.

A sense of foreboding arose in Ming Zhu.

The bizarre word "transmigration" popped into her mind.

Could it be... she had transmigrated?

Don't think that just because she's a whiz kid, she doesn't read web novels! A whiz kid reads novels with far more efficiency than the average person.

Suddenly, the head of a child about five or six years old popped up by the bed, a pair of large eyes rolling around as they gazed at her...

Ming Zhu was startled.

She had transmigrated into an ugly, dark, chubby woman and, what's more, she might have a son this big?

No way?!

Lately, aside from winning several national mathematics Olympiad awards and a physics experiment prize, she hadn't done anything insanely crazy! How come she was assigned this scapegoat role?

The scholarly physique was inversely proportional to liking children; she would rather write ten mathematical papers than babysit!

Suddenly,

the child yelled excitedly toward the door, "Granny, Granny... Old Aunt has woken up! Old Aunt has woken up!!"

That shout gave Ming Zhu a headache.

A flood of memories poured in...

It was over!!

She... really... had... transmigrated!!!

She had transmigrated to a poor mountain village called Qilidun, into a family with the surname Wang.

Her name was now Wang Yongzhu, the eldest unmarried daughter of the Wang Family.

Wang Yongzhu had one older stepsister and four older brothers—all adults except for the Fourth Brother, who was unmarried. Everyone else was married with children. Her mother was known as Old Granny Zhang, and her father, Wang Laozhu, had been a skilled carpenter.

Wang Laozhu's first wife bore him a daughter, then languished with illness for several years before passing away without providing a male heir for the Wang Family. Later, he married Old Granny Zhang as his second wife, and within three years of her arrival, she bore two sons—two plump boys—ensuring the Wang Family line would continue.

Old Granny Zhang then became the Wang Family's great benefactor, and having later birthed two additional sons, her status soared even higher, making her opinion in the Wang Family almost undisputed.

By the time her eldest son was getting married, she birthed a son at an advanced age, receiving an old maid with joy as if she had found some rare treasure. She treasured her like the apple of her eye, and everyone else in the family paled in comparison.

In this ordinary and impoverished village where even eating one's fill was a challenge, the fact that a peasant girl could be raised so plump was astonishing enough to imagine the status Wang Yongzhu held at home.

As for which dynasty it was or what the greater environment was like, Ming Zhu had no idea.

Because the original owner of the body's memories didn't have that information.

The original owner's memories were pitifully narrow, with the furthest place she had been to being the small town outside of Qilidun.

The majority of her memories were about eating…

Glancing again at the Little Bean in front of the bed, she thanked heaven and earth that this wasn't her child.

This was one of her little nephews.

She was still a spinster.

Just then, the curtain at the door moved, and a dark, skinny, middle-aged woman walked in, slightly hunched, with rough hands, sallow skin, and deep wrinkles like bark weathered by wind and rain, yet her eyes were spirited and shrewd. Her thin lips and the deep lines around them made her seem somewhat harsh and not easy to get along with.

Seeing Ming Zhu staring blankly at her, the woman cried out with pleasant surprise, "My Zhuzhu! You've finally woken up! Don't you ever do anything so foolish again. Oh, Zhuzhu, you're the flesh of my heart; if you had drowned, your mother wouldn't want to live either."

By the looks of it, this was undoubtedly her current body's biological mother, Old Granny Zhang.

The sound made her head explode with pain.

The mom she had in her previous life was a city committee leader, who spoke slowly and clearly, with gentle calm and mature intellect, a world apart from the middle-aged peasant woman before her.

Ming Zhu felt a bit overwhelmed.

Seeing her daughter's silly, lifeless demeanor, Old Granny Zhang felt even more heartache.

"Zhuzhu, why are you so foolish, jumping into a pond like that? The Song Family has taken our betrothal gifts; you are already Song Chongjin's fiancée. Whether he wants to marry you or not, he has to. Don't listen to him. If he wants to break off the engagement, no way! Even if he is determined to break it off, he can return the betrothal gifts threefold. Can the Old Song Family afford it? They're nothing but poor wretches and sickly creatures..."

Her rant sprayed spit all over Ming Zhu's face.

The memories inside Ming Zhu's mind also began to piece together.

The cause of the original owner's death...

The original owner had always fancied a man from the village named Song Chongjin, but he didn't reciprocate her feelings. When he invited her out to break off the engagement, she naturally disagreed. Out of humiliation and anger, she threatened to drown herself to scare Song Chongjin.

As it turned out, her act went wrong, and she accidentally drowned for real.

And then Ming Zhu transmigrated over.

…

Ming Zhu felt somewhat speechless. Wasn't it said that the people in the mountains were supposed to be simple and honest?

How come this old maid of the Wang Family was so bold?

Even daring to go after love herself?

Unfortunately, she was ruthlessly rejected by a man!

Upon deeper reflection, it made sense - with her round figure and her dark complexion… it would have been strange if she hadn't been rejected.

Cough!

She was definitely not focused on looks, she was just stating the facts.

Ming Zhu had been influenced by her family from a young age and was naturally calm and content whatever the circumstance, possessing a resilience to take things as they came.

She had no idea how long this transmigration would last.

Perhaps she might never be able to return, and from now on, she would have to live as an ordinary peasant girl, no longer the school beauty and genius she once was.

She decided to just take one step at a time.

So, she opened her mouth weakly and called, "Mother, I was wrong. I shouldn't have jumped into the pond, and I won't like Song Chongjin anymore."

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